Baining
The Baining or Baininger are an indigenous people in the east of the island of New Britain (New Britain, formerly Neupommern) in the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea . Their ancestral territory are the Baining Mountains on the northeastern Gazelle Peninsula , where they were probably displaced as a presumed indigenous population by the Tolai who immigrated from the east an estimated 250 years ago. They call themselves Chachet ("people"); the neighboring Tolai still sometimes disparagingly refer to them as kaulong (primitive), and the early Europeans also adopted this attitude.
The Bainingers are divided into North and South Bainingers with a total of three local authorities (Nordbaining, Sinivit, Lassulbaining). The continued land grabbing of ancestral Baining area by Tolai is a fundamental problem for the traditionally living Baining area.
language
The Baining languages (Kairak, Makolkol, Mali, Qaqet, Simbali, Taulil-Butam, Ura) are only spoken on the Gazelle Peninsula, are among the East Papuan languages and have a total of around 12,000 to 13,000 speakers.
Work and play with the Baining
Work and play play special roles in the Baining. This is apparently due to the fact that their everyday life as small farmers is dominated by repetitive activity. They describe play as childlike, embarrassing and unworthy of an adult. Their culture has been called "the most desolate". Various attempts to research their culture failed. Myths, rituals and religion could not be found. Even the ritual mask dances were given no symbolic meaning.
Initiation ceremonies
The Baining, like many other groups in Oceania, attach particular importance to the phases of life in which man changes. Above all, this includes the transition from young people to adults. During this time, the Baining consider the youth to be particularly vulnerable and exposed to the evil forces. According to the Baining, only rituals can protect them from temptation. In order to allow the young people to enter the community responsibly, it is important for the whole family to undergo an initiation ceremony.
Months in advance, the men of the family begin to manufacture the bark fiber , which is needed for the masks worn during the ceremonies. Meanwhile, the women make the appropriate dance jewelry. The initiates are also accompanied through the ceremonies by sponsors. This shows the connection between the initiation ceremonies and the marriage rules of the Baining. The desired form of marriage for the Baining is namely sister marriage, i.e. a man whose sister marries into a family should later marry a sister of his brother-in-law. These marriages are decided early on so that the older brother-in-law and future father-in-law can take on the role of godfather.
Before the first ceremony, only the brother-in-law leads his godson to the secret place in the bush, where the masks and musical instruments required for the ceremonies are made. The initiator sees this for the first time. The brother-in-law also makes the mask for his godson's first appearance.
The celebration starts with the fire dance at night with three different types of masks. All three mask types consist of a rattan frame, which is covered with bark fiber. This is then painted with red and black patterns.
The kavat mask represents faces. The mask only covers the wearer's head. The dancers are also painted all over their bodies with black, white and red paint. The dancer's calves are wrapped in grass and leaves. In addition, the dancer wears an apron and a penis attachment made of bark fiber. The kavat are the children of the vungvung and represent aggressive spirits that threaten and tempt people.
The vungvung masks are much larger than the kavat . Like the kavat, they consist of a large headboard. In addition, a bamboo trumpet clad with bark fiber protrudes from the throat of the masks. The masks also have wide side hangings covered with leaves and rattan , so that the actual mask is hardly visible. The vungvung are friendly masks, they represent the ancestral spirits. The masks rank above the kavat and lingen.
The last type of mask are the lingen masks. The dancers also wear body paints and calf wraps. The mask is a pointed hat with different jewelry attachments. The linges embody ghosts. They are the youngest sons of the kavat . They act as a fixed folder and guide the other dancers during the dance.
For the nightly mask dance, a fire is kindled around which the spectators gather. Then the drums and flutes begin to play. The women begin with dancing and singing, but withdraw as soon as the first kavat and lingen appear. They appear one after the other, present themselves to the orchestra and dance around the fire. As soon as all the dancers have entered the square, the rhythm of the music slows down and the dancers line up. Then the vungvung emerge with the roar of their bamboo trumpets. They also dance around the fire, but more slowly because the dancers in the masks are less agile. Now the music gets faster again, the masks dance with violent movements in all directions. The kavat run into the fire, step into the embers, knock over logs and stir up sparks to frighten the audience. The dance gets wilder and wilder until its climax shortly before sunrise, finally a signal sounds, the masks leave the square and the music breaks off.
After this night dance, the initiates live in seclusion for a while, during which they learn the making of masks and the laws of the community.
The conclusion of the initiation is the dance of the madask masks. These are also made of rattan and bark, but are much higher than the other masks. They have a kavat-like face, over which a wide bark tube rises. There are two types of madask : the first consists of a hat into which a tall stretched piece of bark bast is inserted, the other is made from one piece. The masks are so high that they have to be supported by bamboo sticks and rattan strings while dancing. As a result, the madask dance is a slow and dignified performance. The day dance of the madask symbolizes the creation of the world by the primeval ancestors. The repetition of this event is intended to ensure the continued existence and fertility of the community.
In the past there was also an initiation ceremony for girls who performed together under a large dome-shaped mask. However, this ceremony is no longer performed.
The content of the initiation ceremonies of the Baining hardly differs from those of other neighboring societies, but what is special is the unusualness and size of the masks. Above all, they represent a contrast to the otherwise simple life of the Baining. Today the fire dances are also performed on other occasions, such as opening a shop. This also gives the Baining the opportunity to earn money by selling tickets.
Nonetheless, for the Baining, the dances are a religious ritual that they are reluctant to talk about with outsiders. With the Kavet dance they depict what the “real” Kavet spirits do in the “real” world (because the material world is only an image of the “real” world): By jumping into the fire and what is produced by it When the flames flare up, the “real” Kavet spirits feed the sun so that it continues to have the strength to rise. The "real" ceremony is led by the supreme deity of the Baining, who is represented in our world as a python . For this reason, pythons are carried around during the dance, which are slaughtered, cooked and eaten the next day. The Baining have not yet revealed any further details.
literature
- Karl Hesse : A Jos! The world in which the Chachet-Bainingers live - legends, beliefs and dances from the Gazelle Peninsula of Papua New Guinea (= sources and research on the South Seas . Volume 2 ). Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-447-05662-5 ( reading sample in the Google book search; introduction by Hermann Joseph Hiery as running text without page numbers or individual references: Die Baininger. Some historical notes on the introduction. PDF, 108 kB, 19 pages - Hesse was Archbishop of Rabaul on the Gazelle Peninsula from 1990–2011 ).
- (Father) Matthäus Rascher: Baining (New Pomerania): Country and people . In: Bernhard Bley (Ed.): From the German South Seas . tape 1 . Aschendorff bookstore, Münster 1909.
- (Father) Matthäus Rascher: Basic rules of the bainings language . In: R. Lange, A. Forke (Hrsg.): Communications of the seminar for oriental languages in Berlin, first department - East Asian studies . Georg Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1904.
- Eva Ch. Raabe: Creativity and transition: initiation masks with the Baining, Gazelle peninsula, New Britain. In: Myth Mask - Ideas, People, World Views, Red Thread for Exhibition 19, Museum für Völkerkunde 1992, Frankfurt am Main, Ed .: Eva Ch. Raabe, pp. 131–150.
- Matthias Gretzschel: Ghosts of the South Seas , Hamburg: Koehler, 2017, ISBN 978-3-7822-1280-9 .
English:
- Jane Fajans: They Make Themselves - Work and Play Among the Baining of Papua New Guinea. In: Worlds of Desire - The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender and Culture , University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1997, ISBN 978-0-226-23444-1 ( excerpt in the Google book search).
- Tonya N. Stebbins: Mali (Baining) Grammar: A Language of the East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. In: Pacific linguistics , Volume 623, Australian National University, 2011, ISBN 978-0-85883-629-7 .
Web links
Individual evidence
-
↑ Karl Sapper , Krauss: Baining Mountains. In: Heinrich Schnee (Ed.): German Colonial Lexicon , source and Meyer, Leipzig 1920, Volume 1, p. 117 f. Quote: »Baining Mountains, still little known main mountain range of the Gazelle Peninsula, Neupommern (German New Guinea), up to 1500 m high, densely forested and sparsely populated by the Baining; it seems to be made up of older and younger igneous rocks as well as raised coral limestone (up to a height of 525 m). The older igneous rocks determined so far are monzonite, augite diorite, augite diorite porphyrite and augite porphyrite. On the northern edge of the Baining Mountains, south of Lassulbucht and Massawa, are the plantings of some German Queenslanders. Recently a few other settlers have also settled. Two small arrowroot production factories have also recently been set up to export this product. The New Guinea company also has a branch here, and above all it builds cocoa [...] «.
-
^ Georg Thilenius : Neupommern - 5th population. In: Heinrich Schnee (Ed.): Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon , Quelle and Meyer, Leipzig 1920, Volume 2, p. 638 ff. Quote: “The Melanesians fall into two groups, one is more under the influence of Neumecklenburg, from where they immigrated maybe 150 years (?) ago [...] suggest that a people who are now extinct or not yet known inhabited the whole island. Maybe the Baining are close to him. […] 1. Toleute (northeast of the Gazelle peninsula) […] 4. Northwest baining, 5. Southeast baining (western part of the Gazelle peninsula, New Pomerania) […] «.
-
↑ a b
Hermann Joseph Hiery: The Baininger. Some historical notes as an introduction . In: Karl Hesse : A Jos! The world in which the Chachet-Bainingers live. Legends, Faith and Dances from the Gazelle Peninsula Papua New Guinea (= sources and research on the South Seas, Volume 2 ). Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-447-05662-5 , pp. VII – XXIX ( limited preview in Google Book Search). Quotations (p. VII): “The name 'Baining', in German 'Baininger', was adopted by the Europeans and is also used today by those who think of themselves as 'Chachet', i. H. Calling 'people' is accepted in dealings with the outside world. [...] To this day, many Tolail people disparagingly refer to the Bainingers as 'Kaulong'. The term means 'primitive, ignorant, inhuman / animal' and is full of racist connotations. [...] The biggest problem of the present is without a doubt the occupation of traditional Baininger land by Tolai without regard to the rights of the Bainingers. "
- ^ Ethnologue entry: Baining (subgroups). In: M. Paul Lewis u. a. (Ed.): Ethnologue: Languages of the World . 17th Edition, SIL International, Dallas Texas 2013, accessed August 13, 2013.
- ^ All Work and No Play Make the Baining the "Dullest Culture". In: Psychology Today . Retrieved June 14, 2016 .